Blog #5 Matthew Detrick Modernist Perspectives on Sexuality and Desire In E.M. Forster’s “The Other Boat”, we find a roller coaster of emotions. A war hero who discovers a battle that has secretly raged within him is brought to his attention after a night with a childhood friend. He discovers an affection for his fellow man he had never known in a ships’ cabin. The result of this shattered all of which Captain Lionel’s knowledge of himself. He was a wounded war hero with orders to go to India, he had a promising career ahead of him, he also had a sweetheart, Isabel, awaiting him. Lionel resisted Cocoanut’s advance at first: “A hand touched them, and he thought no harm until it approached their junction, then he became puzzled, scared and disgusted in quick succession” (pg 255. Forster) This is the reaction of a typical heterosexual man, but them looking out from the same porthole gave them enough contact to spark the hidden desires within them and they consummated them: “That night champagne appeared in the cabin, and he was seduced.” (pg 257. Forster) After this, Lionel realizes the cabin’s door was not bolted, allowing anyone to see in and witness the men together. Lionel is highly upset and reflects over the societal consequences of the act he had committed, losing his military post, as well as his social standing. The next attempt of seduction Cocoanut made was his last, when Lionel’s war wound was reopened and, in the confusion, he saw his lover as his enemy and killed him. The pain of killing his lover induced him to throw himself overboard. the scandal of the murder and suicide resulted in what might have been the same if the love affair had been its stead, a negative memory was left of the men, and Lionel’s mother never spoke of her first born again. The story that comes to mind that compliments this for me would be Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell. The story of Scarlett O’Hara’s journey of Antebellum through Appomattox was one filled with Scarlett challenging the social norms, by being a plantation’s daughter, she was expected to act by certain morals and expectations. She did none of these, she owned her own business to fight off hunger, married men for position and personal gain than for love or a quiet family life. Most of all, Scarlett’s path to scandal was paved by her pursuit of Ashley and relationship with Rhett Butler. Ashley was what Scarlett thought of as her ideal love and husband, even though he married another woman. Rhett was a social pariah, not being able to be received by his own family in Charleston, soliciting services of the local whore house, and openly pursuing Scarlet, even though she was a widow at the time. Both these stories focus on an established ideal, and individuals fighting to keep while failing to follow the same social expectations. This can be best described by Rhett: “Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.” (Mitchell, Audiobook)
1 Comment
Blog #4 Gender, modernism, war
T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” puts war into very eloquent and descriptive manner. Not even the words, but the structure of the poem speaks to the reader, showing through the use of multiple languages that not only one culture or spoken tongue are affected by the ravages of war. Another way Eliot conveys his message is his poetic structure, sometimes showing a clear structure and letting the stanzas go into disarray, an example would be the part about a soldier in the trenches: “My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me. Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? I Never know what you are thinking. Think” (Pg. 40 Eliot) This shows the confusion and frantic chaos in the trenches. Ernest Hemingway has a poem called “A Soldier’s Home” which also shows that frantic chaos and gives a great example to the phrase “There are no atheists in foxholes”: “While the bombardment was knocking the trench to pieces at Fossalta, he lay very flat and sweated and prayed oh jesus Christ. Jesus please get me out. Christ please please please Christ. If you’ll only keep me from getting killed, I’ll do anything you say. I believe in you and I’ll tell everyone in the world that you are the only one that matters. Please please dear jesus. The shelling moved further up the line. We went to work on the trench and in the morning the sun came up and the day was hot and muggy and cheerful and quiet. The next night back at Mestre he did not tell the girl he went upstairs with at the Villa Ross about Jesus. And he never told anybody.” (pg. 109 Hemingway) The Hemingway poem also shows a change in morals in Europe from the old century to the new by the young man’s breaking of his sacred promise while staring into the eyes of what must have seemed as certain death. The Europeans had just passed over the Victorian Era, where a strict sense of modesty and was replaced by the Edwardian Era in the late 1900s through the 1910s, which would become the Roaring 20s some ten years later in America. This wave was one of breaking the strict social norms of their parents by having women more out in public, by dances, as well as smoking and drinking. Eliot also notes this cultural change in The Fire Sermon: “She turns and looks a moment in the glass/ Hardly aware of her departed lover/ Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: “Well now it’s done; and I’m glad it’s over”” (pg. 44 Eliot). Fin-de-Siècle Masculinities: Monsters, Doubles, and Male Friendships
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevens is an excellent example of the duality of mankind, one side embarks to satisfy their curiosities, seeking to discover, contribute positively to himself and his society. In contrast, there lies a part of man who through his baseness seeks to harm and destroy himself and society. This story describes Dr. Jekyll as the good, and Hyde as the bad, Jekyll is a sophisticated English gentleman while Hyde is described as “hardly human! Something troglodytic” (pg. 775, Stevens), or appearing apelike. Many other stories express this divide within man, such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, an animated corpse that exhibits the qualities of a gentleman, which seduces his victims with his outwardly good behavior, as well as a diseased ferocious animal that spreads his undead plague. Another is the legend of wolfmen, men who are attacked by a wolf, and must suffer a nightly fate of becoming a wolf themselves and engaging in savage acts of murder to their loved ones. The Werewolf Of Paris by Guy Endore describes this duality quite well by saying: “werewolves that have but one body, in which the soul of man and of beast are at war. Then whatever weakens the human soul, either sin or darkness, solitude or cold, brings the wolf to the fore. And whatever weakens the beastly soul, either virtue or daylight, warmth or the companionship of man, raises up the human soul. For it is known that the wolf shrinks from that which invites the man.” (Endore, audiobook) The latter is often thought to be the source material for Steven’s Jekyll and Hyde. The duality of man is an intriguing subject in psychology and psychiatry. How can the same creature create, give and love as well as destroy, take and hate? This has been a central question, Sigmund Freud’s concept of the three egos might attempt to give us some understanding. The three egos constantly battle for control over one’s actions, and the winner of control is only clear by one’s character. Jekyll and Hyde attempts to show that this battle rages in each of us, from the time where we first encounter Hyde do we see the Hydes within all who see him as a beast. Although the crowd that surrounded Hyde as he was accosted wanted a sociable financial reconciliation while “there was something about the lot of us that meant mischief” (pg. 769, Stevens), and the wise and calm doctor “turned sick with white with the desire to kill him.” (pg. 769, Stevens). We often experience a brashness in emotion within us when a news story comes out of a child or animal being abused, we want the abuser to suffer as he has caused other’s suffering. Hyde hides within us all and if we let him slip out once too often, we might not be able to recapture him. 5/22 Blog
Unit 2 Maids, not to you mind doth change This poem expresses a hidden world within our world. The time period was held with a firm grasp of a heterosexual culture. Within this, Cooper and Bradley express themselves adequately, they speak of defying, alluring, and astringing themselves from men right from the start of the poem. The rest of the poem details of a world of healing they feel when they express their love with another woman. as if their relationship has a healing quality, so they might flee the pains of the norm they are estranging themselves from. This work for me, reminds me of a polar opposite of this reading, a very masculine tale which is a Louis L’amour western. The Man from the Broken Hills. In the novel, the protagonist, Milo Talon, is wounded by several obstacles as he fights a range war for peace. This includes a cattle thief that shoots Milo, leaving him to rely on his own strengths, mostly his wits and his physical constitution to pull him out of his weakened condition. His fellow man also strengthens Milo by taking him from being a drifter to a fellow cow hand that they learn to trust and respect. It all starts after a confrontation, Milo sticks by the men who helped him by saying: "I ate of your salt, and I'll ride for the brand if they'll take me on." "What's that mean?" Danny asked. "That about the salt? "Some folks think if you eat of somebody's bread and salt it leaves you in debt . . . or something like that," said Hinge. (pg. 6, L’amour) A similar sort of unity is shown by Bradley and Cooper, who rely on each other, saying that “Between us is no thought of pain/ peril, satiety” and “When injuries my spirit bruise/ Allaying virtue ye infuse” (Lines 13- 14, Field). The love between these women may not look the same as the bond between men who fight for each other, but I would argue that both are the same strong love, both healing, and resisting a larger force that threatens them whether it may be cattle rustlers or oppressive heterosexuality. Matthew Detrick
|